Richard Cohen: Guns, end of liberal agenda

2:33 AM,
Jan. 16, 2013

Richard Cohen

Written by

RICHARD COHEN,

Once, after I had written about gun control, a guy called to differ and said that had the Jews of Germany been armed, the Holocaust never would have happened. That assertion, so ahistorical as to be almost laughable, stopped me in my tracks because it went to the black heart of the gun control debate: It's not about guns. It's about the government.

It's about the government in two respects. The first is the conviction that guns are needed to protect Americans from their own government. This fear - maybe paranoia is the better word - is embedded in the National Rifle Association's message and in the ...